


because we are strong (we learn to ask for help)

by quietmarvel



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: Buffy's POV, Canon Compliant, F/M, Marty still has a girlfriend, but not for long, the other five hours, this is also kind of an exploration of buffy's character, what happened in the marathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-05-31 14:24:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19427785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietmarvel/pseuds/quietmarvel
Summary: One moment, Marty was pulling her off the bench. The next, he was sailing across the finish line with her on his back. Five hours passed in a heartbeat, but not for them. A marathon is a struggle, an adventure, a battle, and a challenge that, in this case, took two.





	because we are strong (we learn to ask for help)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on what happened in the five hours Marty and Buffy were running the marathon together, but it also ended up being a lot about Buffy herself and what I think her headspace is like. It's canon compliant, so Marty still has his girlfriend and all. But of course it's part of the growing muffy relationship (headed toward romance). I hope you guys enjoy!

Five more minutes on this bench and Buffy might lose consciousness completely. Something about the metal pressing into the back of her legs, her neck, and her back is pushing her awareness out of her, sending it spiraling toward the sky as her half-closed eyelids sink further down. The all-encompassing exhaustion which brought her to stop in the first place diffuses from her shoulders to her knees to the balls of her feet, and she tries to control her breathing.

The only clear words in her head are these: _make it stop._

And as Marty had jogged away a few minutes ago, leaving her on the park bench, one more thought had topped her jumbled mind: that she, Buffy Driscoll, the girl made of willpower and stubbornness, had never in her life felt more pain than this.

Five more minutes, and Buffy might have stayed on that bench forever. It isn’t just her body shutting down, and it isn’t just her mind accepting defeat. It’s the nagging issue in the back of her mind which began to creep up after the first few miles took more of a toll than she was prepared for.

It is this: that she, Buffy Driscoll, was wrong.

Thoroughly.

She was wrong to challenge Marty, to belittle his months of training into nothing more than a race. She was wrong to try to push her body through something it wasn’t ready to handle. She was wrong to run this marathon at all. But most of all, she was wrong to call Marty, to befriend him with the guise that she had changed at all from months ago when they had first been friends. To pretend to be this new person who could be reasoned with, who could accept anything other than total success.

Buffy feels the tears before she knows they’re coming, but she swallows them back so they only brim the edge of her eyelids. Is she still that girl? The one who stole and destroyed Marty’s shoes, who coerced him into a race, who played tug-of-war with Jonah for five hours straight? The one who runs a marathon with no training on a whim, just because an old competitive streak flared up? Has she even changed at all?

And yet here she is, on a park bench, less than halfway into a race, every bit of fight gone out of her. Marty would be disappointed—no, he wouldn’t. He wanted her to stay here or go to a doctor. Her mother would be disappointed—Buffy cuts this thought off before it can grow. This is her old self speaking, isn’t it? She isn’t disappointing anyone by not being strong enough. She almost sounds like Cyrus, telling herself that, and she allows herself a small smile.

Then she drops the grin completely. The park already looks hazy enough; she doesn’t need other people’s voices in her head, even if it’s just Cyrus. But her own voice, alone in her mind, sounds so angry with her. It keeps telling her to get up and stumble through the next 16 miles, no matter the cost. It lists the people who are angry with her right now. It tells her that if she can’t run this simple race, how can she expect to do well in the basketball championships in a few weeks?

Buffy closes her eyes and is trying to block that voice—her own voice—out, when she hears footsteps pounding toward her. Footsteps in the wrong direction.

“Nice try, Driscoll!”

And it’s like she’s falling. The hazy conversation that follows feels like a fever dream because every word Marty says is fighting away the horrible thoughts in her own head. He wants to cross the finish line with her. He is lifting her up, not tearing her down. She is coasting on air, feeling like she could pound out the next 16 miles in her sleep. With Marty’s arm around her back and her arm around his, pulling each other to the next step and the next, there is a fire burning inside of her. She can do this. She can—

—-

One mile later, and Buffy is sucking air. They are jogging at the minimum pace that can still be considered jogging, and every step feels like the final one she’ll take today. Marty is close enough that he can catch her if she does fall again, and every time their elbows bump Buffy grounds herself in the thought that he is there beside her.

“What do you think about when you run?” Marty asks abruptly. He also slows to a walk, probably because he sees the effort Buffy is expending to move forward isn’t leaving enough energy for her to breathe.

“In track races? Nothing. Just beating the hotshots around me.”

Marty’s exasperated scoff-laugh is exactly what she should have expected. “No, I mean races like this.”

“For cross country? I guess, um, I guess I think about my friends a lot. Things they’ve said to me.”

He nods, offering a hand around her back for support. Buffy accepts, leaning into him, and she notices his intake of breath—must be surprise. The Buffy who Marty first met wouldn’t have blinked an eye at that offer. But this Buffy knows she can’t run this race by herself. She can’t, right? Doubt starts creeping in, and Buffy feels herself wanting to pull away. To start running again, as far from Marty as she can.

The thought of running away from him makes her feel a little sick, so she turns to ask him a question instead. “And what do you think about, as a ‘wise and experienced’ ‘distance runner’?”

“That excellently unhealthy meal I get to eat afterwards,” Marty answers immediately, and Buffy bumps his shoulder in pretend anger.

“Oh, come on. For real.”  
“Honestly?” he pauses for a second, but their slow walk continues on. A man wearing a weight vest jogs past them, breathing hard. “Music.”  
That isn’t a surprise, considering the countless Spotify links Marty has sent without invitation since they started talking again about a month ago. Buffy doesn’t complain, though: just listens to them from start to finish then adds each new one to a growing playlist entitled ‘from the party bops’. After runs, they sit in silence outside his apartment and stretch, sharing his earbuds while his new music find of the day pumps through them. Buffy doesn’t mind never getting to choose, although she had made sure to send him a playlist of her favorite songs of all time. But most music is good music in her opinion, and Marty happens to have good taste. Still, his passion for music runs deeper than that of the majority of the population, and she’s even heard him mention hopes to record something himself.

“What kind? Rare Ariana Grande bops? Bluegrass? Mainstream rap? One of those indie bands which you go through daily?”

Marty frowns, but his mouth quirks because every one of her guesses is a valid one considering his music history. “Right now I just have ‘Tongue Tied’ by Grouplove stuck in there on repeat. Motivational, I guess.”

Buffy feels a kick of adrenaline—hopefully another runner’s high arriving to magically carry her through the next 15 miles—as the lyrics pop into her head. She glances around, then pushes down whatever insecurity she feels. The words spill out, dialed up to a shout. “TAKE ME TO YOUR BEST FRIEND’S HOUSE, ROLL AROUND THIS ROUNDABOUT OHHH YEAH.”

Marty’s eyes get big, but he’s smiling across at her. Buffy breaks away from his arm and starts to run, feeling alive, alive, alive with her arms splayed behind her. “TAKE ME TO YOUR BEST FRIEND’S HOUSE, I LOVED YOU THEN I LOVE YOU NOW!” Marty joins in, running after her. Some of the runners around them look up, smiling or narrowing their eyes through their labored breathing. Looking back at Marty, whose eyes are fixed on her as he continues to sing the words, Buffy reaches out a hand to pull him forward. They round a corner, where the next mile sign shines up at them. He squeezes her hand, lets go, and then bumps her shoulder as they fall back to a jog but continue on, the lyrics caught in her mind on repeat, reminding her to smile.

—-

“So what were you thinking about when you stopped?” Marty asks. They’ve been talking about music and concerts for a bit, but after a few moments of comfortable silence he’s come back to this.

Buffy closes her eyes as she walks, trying to remember the moments before her unsteady run came to a halting stop. “I think…I think I was hashing through a memory. Trying to encourage myself. Um…” She trails off, wondering how much she should let her guard down, let her emotions spill out. She doesn’t do this, not even with the Good Hair Crew most of the time. It feels dangerous.

Marty doesn’t say anything for a moment, then speaks. “I do that too, all the time. I think about my first track race, when I almost gave up and just left the track. My friend Nick was there watching, and he yelled at me from the bleachers to ‘get myself together and just run’. He didn’t know it, but it was what I needed to hear. And I thought about what my coach had said to me the day before, sort of offhandedly: ‘do it for the feeling you get when you’re done’. I wanted that feeling, and so I went after it.”  
“I want that feeling too,” Buffy breathes. She wants it right now, mainly so the pain and dehydration will end. Marty’s right that plain success feels different than victory or triumph. But it’s still all-consuming, overpowering. More than winning, it’s a sense that you can accomplish anything, given the time and the effort.

Marty falls into another silence, and she knows they’re both tasting the finish line in their minds. But they’re still 14 miles out, not even halfway done, just walking along.

While he’s silent, Buffy replays the memory in her mind, the one that she was trying to use for inspiration. She wants to tell him, because he of all people understands. And he knows how much it is to ask for her to be vulnerable.

So after a few minutes, she inhales and begins to speak. “I was remembering a time when Cyrus and I went waterskiing.”

A pause, and Marty smiles. “I bet you kicked ass at waterskiing, huh? Poor Cyrus.”  
“I did, but that’s not the point. On another note, please go waterskiing with me at some point because Cyrus swore it off. Anyways—after we went waterskiing, his parents left us alone on the dock, and we were just laying there. I remember it was afternoon, and…and it was when I was like ten or eleven. I hadn’t really talked to anyone before that about my mom, or at least, not seriously. She had been back for a year or so when I was nine, but after that she was deployed for a while and I didn’t see her for a couple more years. Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about that the whole trip, even when I was flying out there on waterskis. So I talked to Cyrus about it, and I started… well, I started crying. That was definitely the first time he saw me cry, and probably the first time anyone did. I would never cry when my mom left because I didn’t want to make her sad. But Cyrus… he just listened, and he was so kind. I told him I didn’t think I could handle her being gone the next couple years, because they were such important years in my life and she wouldn’t be there.”  
She pauses to breathe in, collect herself. The pain in her legs has disappeared in the haze of the memory, but her mouth is dry. It’s too late to stop the story now, though. She glances over at Marty quickly and then continues.

“I remember a moment when Cyrus just looked at me and smiled. He said ‘you can handle a lot more than you think you can’. And that just stayed with me, I guess.” Nostalgia and love for Cyrus rise up in Buffy, and she sets her jaw, turning to Marty. “That’s what I was thinking about, but it didn’t stop me from stopping.”

“Maybe, but it might’ve kept you going longer than you could have otherwise,” he says slowly. “And Cyrus was right. Look—we’re halfway done!” He points to the 13.1 mile marker on the side of the road, and Buffy lets out a whoop. A few spectator families with encouraging signs give a celebratory cheer in return.

Buffy turns into Marty’s cheek, whispering,“Why is that family holding up a sign that says ‘it’s all uphill from here’?”

He laughs, bumping his face against hers. “The Shadyside marathon course has all the hills in the second half. Buffy groans, tilting her head back.

“Despair—“ she starts to lament, when Marty gives her a tug on the arm. He gestures to the water station, and Buffy nearly falls over her feet trying to get to the table. “I feel slightly less despair,” she concedes, swallowing the whole cup. Marty passes her an energy chew, which she gladly accepts.

“Whoaa, we’re halfway there,” Marty sings to her quietly, and Buffy resists the urge to smack him upside the head as they continue on. They start to jog-walk away from the water station, even passing a few people. Buffy searches herself for another coveted runner’s high but finds no such hidden energy, only a well of memories and Marty’s arm around her shoulder, Still, it’s enough.

—-

“No, you’re wrong. Platypi are objectively the best animal. I mean, come on! Nothing can top that. Honestly, nothing can top most of Australia.”  
“ _Honestly,_ the first time we met you asked me if I had ever eaten a live frog. Making your opinion on any animal invalid. Besides, whale sharks are better. I mean, have you ever seen one?”  
“No, but—“  
“Oh my god. We have to go to the aquarium. Next week?”  
“Tuesday. Okay, but if you ever go to Australia you’ll realize the error of your ways.”  
“Have _you_ ever been to Australia?”  
“Well, no—“  
“Point made. According to Cyrus, there are spiders that eat birds there. So.”  
“So that’s even more cool! Come on, did you not watch _Animal Planet_ as a kid?”  
“Only if I wanted a scary story on Halloween. Saturday morning cartoons with my dad was always a tradition.”

“My mom and I used to bake cookies all night on Christmas Eve while my brother was asleep. I always thought I could make it late enough to see Santa, but I never could. I always fell asleep.”  
“Aww little Marty, everyone knows sleep is for the weak!”  
“Not if you’re a distance runner! You _are_ getting in your sleep every night, right? To get ready for cross country?”  
“Of courseee I am.”  
“The exaggerated winking isn’t helping your case.”  
“The fingerfeet aren’t helping your case either, but I’m still here with you.”

—-

Buffy’s English teacher had once assigned the class to write a personal response on what silence meant to them. At the time, Buffy had stared at her paper in exasperation, twisting the pen in her hand and occasionally throwing looks at Andi, who was furiously scribbling. Writing had never been Buffy’s thing, and ‘the meaning of silence’ wasn’t exactly the most riveting topic. Basketball was, or track, or action movies with dance sequences.

As she stumbles past the 15 mile marker, though, halfway between a resigned walk and a pathetic jog, Buffy keeps on returning to that word: silence.

Marty hasn’t spoken for the last mile, just offered an arm whenever she faltered and jogged along at his own pace beside her. But, for once in her life, Buffy doesn’t want to fill the quiet with words piling on top of each other.

_Comfortable_ silence is the term Mrs. Beckett, her English teacher, would use to describe it. But ‘comfortable’ isn’t a word Buffy is prepared to use so easily, not when she’s just getting used to Marty’s being around again. She keeps thinking, though, considering the easy quiet between them as they trudge along. It’s a painful opposite of the stark silence in her own home back when she was younger, every afternoon and night that her mom was deployed and her dad was working. Reliving those empty moments feels like waking back up in her twelve year-old body, pressed between the couch and the wall, listening to herself breathe in the small space because at least that was more noise than the hum of the air conditioning. Or pressing her ear to the running washing machine. The hum was like a weight on a see-saw, tipping her back into balance, and she could pretend her mom was running around behind her, dropping papers or cycling on her spin bike in the hallway.

Now, she can hear her own footsteps, pushing to be in time with Marty’s. She can hear the wind snapping through the trees and blowing bright green leaves into their path. And she can hear her own heartbeat slamming against her sternum, like it wants to jump out of her chest and splatter on the ground—that’s what this race is taking from her. And maybe—if she’s being generous, if she’s being the version of herself that spills personal memories to Marty—it’s also nerves.

Her flutter-heartbeat understands what running this race with him means: a concession of the greatest sort. A failure. If she finishes this race, if she even can, then she is surrendering her past self. Completely. She’s becoming someone new, the person Marty thinks she can be. And yet, she still feels the same tether, that pull toward isolation. Toward the empty sort of fulfillment that comes with sole success.

That’s how quick it comes—the spiral backward. Next to her, Marty inhales quickly, coughs a few times, and then shakes himself back into the rhythm of jogging. Then he hesitates a second and slows to a walk.

And Buffy wakes herself up. Holds a calming hand to the anger inside her. She listens to the quiet breaths next to her, keeping her eyes focused on the tree line in the distance. Kicking at the leaves gathered on the road in front of them, she lets the tension go out of her clenched fingers, her neck, her squinting eyes.

This silence isn’t sharp; it doesn’t cut through her. But it surrounds her, down to the soles of her running shoes and the curves of her ligaments and tendons. She gives Marty a nudge as they walk, nodding toward the sign they’ve just passed. Sixteen miles in.

He flicks his eyes in her direction, in a way that says _just ten miles left, Driscoll._ But he doesn’t have to _say_ anything at all.

—-

Somewhere in the seventeenth mile they reach a wooded path behind Grant High, trails packed with mud and shaded by birches leaning into each other. In the distance Buffy can see the tips of football stadium lights blinking over the forest, but for now the path is quiet. Most of the runners are gone, well into their final stretch of miles by now.

She and Marty are having a conversation about the merits and downsides to living in a small town like Shadyside, where everyone knows everyone. Just before she can make a point about the nonexistence of privacy, Marty stumbles over a root and goes crashing down onto the muddy ground.

All this exertion must have slowed down her instincts, because Buffy just stares for a second before falling to her knees beside him.

“Marty, I don’t mean to be blunt, but if you injured anything we’re getting off this course immediately.” She waits a second as he rolls over onto his back, then slides to sit up beside her.

“Hate to disappoint, but I think we have to keep going,” he says, mouthing the words around a poorly concealed smile. He moves to stand, but Buffy reaches a hand out to hold him back, splaying it against his arm.

“What happened? What hurts? Was it those stupid shoes that made you trip?”  
Shaking his head, Marty reaches down to his ankle, where Buffy can see a newly formed bruise spreading out from the center of the bone, accompanied by a shallow cut which is currently staining blood on his finger-shoes and the dirt.

Buffy almost starts yelling about how he’s injured, but Marty turns to face her, bringing his face close enough that she can see the flecks of gold in his dark brown eyes.

“Buffy. It’s fine.” He cleans his fingers on his shirt, then scrapes the dirt and blood off his ankle. The bruise remains, sickeningly fresh. “See? No injury.”  
She shakes her head, reaching to point at his ankle. “ _That_ is not good, Marty. It could be sprained.”  
“Or it could be just bruised. The cut will heal; besides, we don’t have bandages or anything anyway. We should just keep going.”

Restraining herself from yelling back at him, Buffy inhales slowly and takes note of how her body feels, from the cramps in her stomach and legs to the soreness in her heels to the aching in her tense arms. Then she looks over at Marty, who, apart from the bruised ankle, seems a good deal less disheveled than her. He raises his eyebrows expectantly.

She almost starts to nod, when they hear footsteps from behind. Marty does a double take—they haven’t seen anyone in what feels like hours—but turns back to see a graying man with a Shadyside Track Club jersey, a sweatband, and a number on his stomach. He jogs along toward them, taking stock of their askew numbers and reddened faces. Buffy imagines how they must look, framed in the afternoon sunlight with their legs thrown out across the path, facing each other intently.

“What are you kiddos doing?” he yells from twenty feet away. When he finally gets to the turn in the path where they are, he gives them both a stern look, as if he’s caught them breaking some rule. “Get up and run your race! You can’t lose to me.”  
“We’re walking, not running,” Marty says matter-of-factly, losing his symmetry with Buffy to shuffle to his feet. Buffy shakes herself from her haze and stands next to him, slightly swaying. In her peripheral vision she checks on Marty’s ankle, but he seems to be standing on it just fine.

The man frowns some more, than shrugs and keeps running. As he recedes, he calls back, “Sorry lovebirds, I’d love to stop and talk. But no stopping for me!” And then he’s gone.

Buffy scoffs immediately and then turns to Marty, whose eyes have gotten large. He looks flustered for the first time since when she yelled at him to leave her on the bench. _Lovebirds?_ Maybe they looked like an old married couple having a squabble. _Maybe._

And Marty’s the one with the girlfriend, so he keeps glancing from the path ahead to the ground to the trees—anywhere but her. Buffy swallows and centers herself, and then she gives him a gentle shove on the back.

“Let’s go. We’ve got miles to walk, arguments to have.” And she starts to walk, pushing him along with her. His visible panic breaks, and he grins lopsidedly over at her, eyes still enormous.

“I prefer to think of them as ‘spirited discussions,’ actually…”

—-

If Buffy notices how Marty winces when he lands on his ankle for the next mile or so, she doesn’t comment. He would tell her if he needed to stop; she’s sure of that. It’s one area where they differ completely. Marty never taught himself to reject help, to turn inward no matter the cost. But as Buffy catches herself thinking these thoughts, she attempts to strike through them. And she focuses back on the running. On Marty.

Short of a first-rate miracle, there’s no chance they are anywhere close to his goal time. Per his instruction, they both left their watches at home, planning to run based on mental timing, instinct, and mostly just measuring their own reservoir of energy. Now Buffy is sure they’ve been running for four and a half hours already, with eight miles left. The sun is high in the sky, scraping in the bright hours post-noon. Marty keeps pointing at the overwhelming blue above them, alternating between appreciating the endless generic niceness of the day and expressing annoyance for it.

“Clouds or no clouds?” Marty asks, while Buffy attempts (and fails) to muse artistically about the sky. Andi would be ashamed “Which do you prefer?” He is turned around to face her, taking careful step backwards along the road.

“Clouds, no question.” She hands him her water bottle, and he waterfalls a few drops before tossing it back to her. “They make the sky prettier.”  
“And since when has the prettiness of anything mattered to you?”  
Buffy nearly gives him a shove but stops because he’s already stumbling trying to walk backwards. “I can appreciate aesthetic appeal! Like clothes and nature and people and all that. I don’t know why you thought I couldn’t.” In lieu of the frustrated shove she gives him a petty sigh of disdain and an eyebrow raise, which seem to do the trick. He purses his lips to consider, then focuses back on her.

“Wait, the aesthetic appeal of people? Please elaborate.”

The eyebrow goes up even farther. “In your dreams, Marty from the Party. Now tell me, what is it about a cloudless sky that’s so appealing?”

He bites his lip and turns his head upward. “Feels like I could go on for miles, and the world would still be the same. It would still trace back to the place where I started.”

“So no matter how many steps you take, you’re always stuck under this same horrible blue. You can’t escape.”

“I don’t want to escape,” he says quietly. He stops—and so Buffy stops—and they both stare up at the overwhelming blue. “I want to be out here, in the world, making it a place I know and understand. And only running can do that for me.”  
Their conversation is starting to feel strangely existential, a territory which Buffy usually only breaches with Cyrus in tow after a long night of talking. But there’s something about miles under the same sky that carries people over that boundary quicker than should be possible.

“Maybe. But don’t you ever feel trapped?” _Like both of your parents left you to an empty house, to grow up in the arms of friends and friends’ parents, to build strength like an armor that was only keeping you locked inside?_

“Never. Not while I can run.” And he takes off jogging, not even hand-waving that she follow—but she does.

—-

“What’s Marty short for?”

Asking him about what boys did at sleepovers hadn’t been too much. Asking him to reenact his childhood church performance of ‘Deep and Wide’ had been acceptable. Even asking for a few details about Rachel, the most awkward conversation yet, had gone fairly well. But this—

“What?”  
He says it as if she’s just broken into his home and thrown around a few things before demanding highly personal details.

“Uh… your name. A name which, I might add, is usually reserved for sixty-plus senior citizens who play the piano in old folks’ homes.” She points at the 20-mile sign as they pass it, signally they’ve got 6.2 miles left. A 10K—something she’s done before. Something she can do again, no matter what the aching in her legs and lungs is telling her.

“My name’s Marty. Last name is irrelevant. What’s the question?” Marty tugs at his tee-shirt, a tell which Buffy has noticed comes up whenever he’s avoiding talking about something. Their first few meet-ups after the fateful phone call had involved some awkward moments as they got back into the swing of things, and he had always tugged on his collar to fill the silence. The residual discomfort between them is Buffy’s fault—before their friendship-break, Marty and Buffy had never felt the sting of awkward silences. But now it’s part of their rebuilding routine, just like hour-long runs, movie nights, and actual conversations.

“The question is: what is Marty short for? Matthew? Matthias? Mateo? MARTIN? It’s Martin, isn’t it? That’s what it is.”  
He shakes his head slowly and then faster. “It’s just Marty.”

“Does _Rachel_ know what it’s short for?” As soon as the words are out Buffy regrets them.

Now he looks genuinely horrified. “Listen, Buffy, I don’t really know—“  
“Wait, why is this so hard for you to answer?” She squints, remembering that feeling in her chest when he had asked about the memory with Cyrus. Vulnerability. Even if it’s just over his less-than-common name, Buffy recognizes that same emotion in Marty now. So she stops, just for a moment. She waits for him to continue.

“I…it’s not short for anything. Just Marty, I know that’s weird, but that’s what it is. Marty. From the party, if you prefer,” he says, all in a rush, and then he stops.

“Okay,” she says slowly, as they turn a bend and pass another park. “Um, sorry?”

Marty starts to gasp softly, and Buffy turns, alarmed. But she sees the gasp become a soft snicker and then a full-blown, uncaring laugh.

“What? What!” she asks, attempting to contain her own laughter. He shakes his head, rubs at his eyes, and calms down enough to look her in the eye.

“It’s just…” he trails off, biting his lip and laugh-gasping. “It’s just, the Buffy I knew months and months ago would _never_ —“  
“Alright, I know, I know!” Buffy interrupts, yelling. No one’s around, so she lets the words echo past the scattered oak trees into the empty sky. “I get it, okay—“  
“No, no, Buffy, it’s a good thing,” he says, calming the laughter. He puts a hand on her shoulder and works his mouth into a smile. “It’s incredible. You’re amazing, okay?”  
She shuts up at that. His voice sounds like it did when she called him out of the blue to apologize for what went down—struck with wonder. Exposed. Bordering on vulnerable.

“Okay, just Marty,” she says softly, looping her left hand around his neck and bumping his side. “Let’s finish this little run.”

—-

Six miles. Five miles. Four miles. Three. The markers tick off as Buffy and Marty stroll or jog past them in varying states of distress. Marty gets a cramp in the 22nd mile, and no amount of stretching or vaguely official remedies seem to help until a mile passes. At one point they stop to fish out water cups thrown in a local creek and toss them into the actual trash bin.

Buffy knows now what exhaustion is. She feels the all-consuming desperation to stop, just like Marty must—but they can’t stop now. It’s afternoon, and every inch the sun moves down on the horizon is more incentive to finally, finally cross the finish line. So she continues to suck in labored breaths, accepts a hand from Marty when she needs it, and goes on.

“Who do you think won?” she asks at one point, leaning on Marty for support.

“Us,” he says gently, elbowing her in the stomach. She gives a yelp and pretends to sprint forward like they’re racing each other. “Oh, now you want to have a race? Because I’ll totally out-sprint you.”  
“In your dreams, Marty,” she asserts, stumbling forward.

“Careful, Driscoll. You already used that line on me, remember?”

“The only thing I remember is signing up for this so I could destroy you in an athletic competition. And there’s still time.” Her confidence falters as her drained legs threaten drop her on top of Marty again, but she still meets his dark eyes.

“I would say unbelievable, but really, this is all too believable. Honestly, if we get to that finish line and you start sprinting, I won’t even have the heart to be disappointed,” he responds, and his tone is joking but his eyes are sad.

Buffy closes her eyes and locks one hand on his upper arm. “You wanted to cross the finish line together, and this is our race. So we will.” She looks up at him, trying to will away the drowsiness she’s feeling. But he sees it and smiles, wrapping his arm around her waist to support her. She does to the same to him, and they speed-walk past the sign informing them that after twenty-four miles they only have 2.2 more.

“Shit,” he says, “we’re so close.”

“Not done yet,” she whispers. They’ve traversed a few more meters when Marty suddenly stops beside her, letting out a low gasp. “What’s wrong?”  
He shakes his head but nods forward to the side of the path ahead of them, where a small figure is hunched on the curb. Buffy focuses and sees that it’s a young girl, probably eleven or twelve, wearing a tank top and running shorts. Marty pulls her back when she starts toward her.

“What should we do?” he asks slowly.

“Talk to her, first. Ask what’s going on.” It’s what Cyrus would do, and he’s the one who taught her how to be kind. So Buffy pulls Marty behind her toward the girl, who is currently rocking back and forth and tugging at her braid.

“You okay?” Marty calls out as they get closer. The girl’s eyes flicker up immediately and Buffy sees that she has a number on her stomach.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says immediately, frowning at them. Buffy nods but slides to sit down beside her on the curb.

“You sure? What’s your name?”

“Taylor.” It’s all she’ll give up before clamping her lips again. They tremble slightly on the word tough, and Buffy shares a look with Marty, whose eyebrows are drawn together as he appraises the situation.

“Listen, Taylor…” she starts.

“Go away, please.” Buffy notices for the first time that Taylor’s eyes are red and swollen, like she’s been crying.

“Are you running the marathon?” Marty asks, sitting down on the other side of the girl. Buffy swallows, nods appreciatively toward him, and caps any annoyance with the girl’s attitude. She thinks about Cyrus, about the countless moments they’ve shared kindness like it cost nothing. It shouldn’t cost anything here.

“I was. I can’t finish it though,” she says shortly.

“Why not?” Marty asks. Taylor shakes her head slowly. And then it all comes out at once.

“I’ve run a marathon before, actually. This is my second one, and I thought it was going to be better. But four separate people have asked me while I was running by them: why am I doing this? Telling me I shouldn’t be doing it. Telling me I can’t. Like, aren’t runners supposed to support each other? That’s what my mom always says. I’m gonna stay here until she calls me and ask her to pick me up. I don’t want to finish. Whatever.”

Across from her, Marty takes a shaky breath. Buffy can see his dark eyes darting back and forth, trying to formulate a plan. In the back of her head, Buffy imagines the clock at the finish line, ticking up and up—they’re _so_ close.

But this matters more.

Buffy lets out a breath and turns to Taylor. “Who’s stronger, you or those idiots who trash-talked your race?”

Marty inhales and turns to look at her, his eyes once again widening. But he doesn’t say anything. _He trusts you._ Buffy puts one hand on Taylor’s shoulder as the girl processes what Buffy asked.

“I—I’m stronger.”

“Exactly. But if you sit here and don’t finish the race, then you’ve proven them right. And they think they’re stronger than you,” Buffy says, meeting Taylor’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter what it takes to get there. I couldn’t finish this race running, so I’m going to walk. My…um, my friend here is helping me. And we can help you, if you want.”

Taylor shakes her head slowly, but Buffy can see her jaw working as she considers the offer. Finally she gets to her feet, adjusting her number and then turning to look down at Marty and Buffy.

“I can’t accept your help,” she starts, and Buffy gets on her feet, ready for another round of inspiration. But before she can reassure her, Taylor shakes her head and keeps speaking. “I can’t accept it because I need to run the rest of this race, not walk. But… I’ve got to finish. You’re right. Um, thanks.” Buffy watches her turn away and start to run—not jog, but truly run—toward the finish line. Beside her, Marty slowly gets to his feet, rubbing a hand up and down his arm.

Buffy is already walking in the direction Taylor took off when Marty catches her by the forearm.

“Buffy.”

It might be the quietest she’s ever heard his voice.

“Buffy, where did you learn how to do that?” he asks to her back. Slowly, she turns around to look at him, the afternoon sun catching on every feature as he considers her, and she considers him.

“Um, what do you mean? How to be so flexible? So good at running? So expert at bantering—“

Marty squeezes her arm, and Buffy feels it down to her bone. “No, I mean… I mean, that was incredible. It was kind, and fierce, and you totally just changed that girl’s life, and—“  
“They were just words,” Buffy says incredulously, raising her eyebrows to meet his gaze. “They couldn’t have done that much—“  
“Buffy, I know you’re used to your actions speaking louder than what you say. And I know you’re not used to this—“ he gestures in Taylor’s general direction,”—being a strength. But that was something more than banter or competition. That was kindness. Inspiration.”

Buffy pulls away, the words swimming inside her head. She’s not sure she’s ever heard Marty so boldly sentimental, not since he indirectly asked her out on the bridge. He’s right: this, whatever _this_ is—emotions, feelings—is not supposed to be a strength of Buffy’s. And it’s not something she’s willing to confront, not 24 miles into a race and not in the middle of a park, not again.

Marty is still looking at her, his eyes even more fiercely concentrated than they were on Taylor a few moments ago. But he doesn’t say a word, so Buffy turns and walks in the direction of the finish line. She trusts he’ll follow.

—-

Andi once sent Buffy a series of elaborate messages on the taste of sunlight. At the time, Buffy had written it off as a byproduct of spending too much time with either Jonah or Amber—it’s hard to keep up. By the end of the marathon, Buffy isn’t tasting sunlight (it had disappeared behind the trees), but she _is_ tasting a variety of other things. First and foremost, exhaustion, which is familiar at this point. Secondly there’s sweat, and maybe a few tears of frustration slipping down her face. But last is the achingly close taste of success, of her feet pounding across the finish line, which is less than a mile away after hours and hours of moving forward relentlessly.

So close, but Buffy is slipping. Dehydration, Marty’s first warning, is the first cause to come to her mind, but she’s been drinking water at every station and sipping on their shared bottle as well. Fatigue can account for the dull pains up and down her arms and legs. Lack of training explains the slightly wheezing breaths, and her right ankle is just constantly sore. But her eyes keep drifting off, unable to focus on the asphalt ahead of them or Marty’s voice beside her. It’s like she’s detaching from herself, floating somewhere high above this stretch of road littered with cups and long forgotten signs of encouragement.

Buffy thinks about Taylor flying across the finish line, her braid swinging behind her. Then she imagines herself following behind, but she can’t quite picture it. She can see herself falling over the line, just like she collapsed onto Marty earlier. In the dream, Marty watches her fall and smack her head against the concrete. His eyes are as big as they were when the old man called them lovebirds and when she convinced Taylor to keep running. They’re like dark stars, shining at her but also sucking everything into them. She wonders how often he looks at her like that.

She wonders about a lot of things, but they’re all sucked away into the hazy dream-state that is her exhausted mind. The runner’s high—unfortunately a temporary occurrence—had hit her in the eighth mile, back when she was still running on her own. Now all that’s left in her reservoir is willpower. That, and anger. No matter which way she attempts o spin her own personality, there is always going to be some of that. It’s nonnegotiable, and maybe it’s resentment that she doesn’t want to take out on her parents. Maybe it’s a screwed up expression of that strength she wanted more than anything. Maybe it’s just who she is. Maybe it means nothing at all.

But here, out on the course, the anger doesn’t stay anger. She learned that the moment she was first allowed to run in practice, hair flying freely behind her and feet pounding into the ground. Anger on the course is drive. It’s passion. It’s courage.

But courage is not always enough, not when her body is giving up on her. No amount of pent-up feelings can overcome that.

“Buffy? Buffy!” The voice fades in and out of her consciousness as she runs on, knowing only half a mile remains.

_Here we go again._ And there’s the same voice in her head— _you could black out!_ — _I can’t leave you_ — _I want to cross the finish line with you_. She needs to stay awake so she can hear that voice, loud and in the present, as they cruise across the finish line. She needs to stay focused on it, needs to—

“Buffy.”

Two hands on her shoulders shock her whole body awake, pull her down from the dream-high, and ground her feet on the road.

She takes two shaky breaths before meeting Marty’s eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Shock doesn’t widen his eyes like she expects but softens them instead as he grips tighter on her shoulders. “We’ve got less than half a mile left. That’s less than two laps on a track, less than your walk to school, less than a trip around the block. Just breathe, and walk.”

Buffy waits for him to finish and then shakes her head, putting both her hands on his arms. “If I keep walking I’m going to black out. You go on without me; I’ll wait.”

“Hell. No. We started this race together, and we are crossing that finish line together. You’re strong, Driscoll. Strong enough to do this.” Marty draws himself closer so they’re almost hugging, and Buffy doesn’t resist. The image keeps replaying in her mind, of her being unable to cross the finish line herself. Of collapse. Of failure.

So many basketball games, races, and competitions later, and it all seems to come down to this. Not anger, not competitiveness, not even strength. Just that tiny four letter-word: fear.

Buffy Driscoll is afraid of failure. Of being wrong. Of showing the world that she isn’t who they think she is. It’s in every card game, every brainstorming session with her friends, every test, every exchange of words, every fleeting moment of eye contact. It’s in everything, and it’s inside of her as much as the exhaustion is.

She wonders if Marty knows. He’s always looked at her like he can see right down to the bone without even trying.

“I can’t do it,” she says simply. _If I finish, I’m a failure for conceding to help. If I don’t finish, I’m a failure for not completing what I said I could._

_No matter what I do, I’m vulnerable, vulnerable, vulnerable._

Marty waits a few moments, their arms still pulled tight against each other. He looks her in the eye for several long seconds, and she tries to meet his gaze. She can’t.

And then Marty breaks away, and Buffy’s heart drops to her feet with the knowledge that he’s going to leave her here. Like the bridge, like the bench. It’ll just be her and the empty silence. Her and the fear.

His eyes never leave hers, though. Not until he turns around completely and drops to the ground, facing away from her. Buffy waits for him to take off sprinting, waits to be completely alone. But he doesn’t leave.

“If you can’t run, then walk,” he says. He’s still facing away. “If you can’t walk, take a break. If you don’t think you can keep going,“ and now he turns around, lips pursed together and cheeks tinted red, “I’ll carry you.”

It takes a second to register. “What?”

“Get on my back. We’ve got to go, Driscoll. This is how we finish our race.”

In her head, Buffy falls across the finish line once, twice, a thousand times. In her head, Marty leaves her to the elements, to her own emotions. But here, where she can taste her own sweat and here her own unsteady breaths, she climbs onto Marty’s back and hooks her legs around his arms and her arms around his neck. She doesn’t say a word. But Marty keeps walking unsteadily forward until they close the distance to a final hundred meters and he starts to run, terrifying every cell in Buffy’s body as they fly toward the line.

There are no words, just laughter and relief as they stumble the few final feet. The wind bites at Buffy’s shoulders as she digs her fingers into her own arm, trying to hold on. Over and over, instead of seeing herself collapsing, she hears his voice: _I’ll carry you. I’ll carry you. This is how we finish our race. I want to cross the finish line with you._

And then they do say words, but Buffy is already too full of—everything—to appreciate most of what is said, besides what is simultaneously the easiest and hardest thank you she has ever said. The past five hours seem indefinite and unreal, already blurring in her memory. But the time on the clock and the lowering sun in the sky prove they were undeniably, impossibly real.

As Buffy slings her arm around Marty, pulling him toward that unhealthy meal he was craving so much, she doesn’t try to summarize the race in her head or contain it to a few single words. Because the marathon is made up of every moment, every conversation, every glance and touch, every gesture—physical or emotional, every breath and every step. That’s how it has always been with Marty, a step forward each moment, requiring focus and dedication and introspection from both of them. And he, of course, at the end of it all, is right. No matter what situation they put themselves in, or the world puts them in, as long as they have this, as long as they have the run—the growth, the steps forward, the challenge—they have their strength. And they will stay free.


End file.
